Dacre's War (30 page)

Until now the cardinal had been his ally, and that was what alarmed Dacre. The evidence against him must be serious for the Lord Chancellor to mount a trial. A man of his means, and methods, would more usually have dismissed inconvenient accusations out of court.

No matter; now the business must be seen through. Fingering the neck of his long black cape, the baron was led to a box chair facing a canopied dais at the far end of the room. There the members of the tribunal were arranged behind a silk-draped trestle, like guests at a wedding feast, Wolsey seated in the bridegroom’s position, red-capped, in their midst. From an almost empty bench beneath the window Blackbird thought he could recall no bridegroom looking more eager for the day to unfold. He swallowed at the sight of his master, sitting alone before such a group, but the baron seemed composed, his head tilted, a sardonic twist to his mouth, as if waiting for an entertainment to begin.

The first hour was filled with paperwork, as Wolsey confirmed the tribunal’s membership, and the identities of Dacre’s accusers. Some the baron had never heard of, but most were foes of long standing. He nodded, grimly, as Lord Lethven was listed. A member by marriage of the Percy family, he was fiercer in protecting the Percy name than the old duke himself. As for his own Vice Warden betraying him like this – he who would willingly have given Eure anything he asked – had the flagstones of the Star Chamber not been so newly swept, Dacre would have spat.

In chilling detail Wolsey then outlined the procedures and methods of the Star Chamber, which differed from every other court in the land. This was the only place where the titled and the powerful had no influence, their connections and money worth nothing. Instead, the Lord Chancellor’s rule was absolute. His judgements were always upheld, and his prejudices too. That much was obvious even to Blackbird as the cardinal listed the court’s manifold and complicated rules and regulations. By the end of the recital, Dacre’s chin was propped on his shirt, and the butler’s legs were twitching.

‘Preliminaries hereby dealt with,’ said Wolsey, raising his voice as if addressing a cathedral, ‘we may now proceed. Since you are conducting your own defence, matters will be greatly simplified. We are all grateful for that, I am sure.’ He stared at Dacre, and a wordless minute passed in which motes of dust spindled around the room, and the muffled sound of rivermen and peddlers reminded the assembly that in this chamber normal life was suspended.

‘Baron Thomas Dacre,’ Wolsey announced at last, ‘I have before me ten most serious accusations against you, signed on oath, from some of the noblest and most honourable men of the realm, as you have heard. What say you to that?’

Dacre cleared his throat, but merely shook his head.

‘You are not surprised?’ asked Wolsey, archly amazed. ‘Such accusations are a commonplace for one in your position?’

‘They are no very unusual, if that’s what ye mean,’ replied Dacre, his northern brogue thickening in these surroundings, as if to counter the city’s strangled vowels.

Wolsey looked down at a paper beneath his heavy-ringed fingers. ‘I do believe you are already familiar with the workings of this court, my lord, having felt its authority when you were a far younger man.’

‘Aye,’ said Dacre, crossing his legs at the ankle, ‘but that time it was the king himself who cross-examined me, and wrote out the deposition, and signed the verdict, and pocketed the fine. Very angry he was and all. But we made up, eventually.’

‘Should this court find you as guilty on this occasion as the last,’ said Wolsey, ‘his son will be even more angry, I assure you.’

Dacre raised an eyebrow in reply.

‘Then let me read you the litany of complaint I have before me,’ continued the cardinal, adopting the sing-song tone of a man about to deliver a homily without fear of interruption. What followed would have unsettled most men, but as the denunciations rolled from the cardinal’s tongue, Dacre’s face betrayed nothing but boredom.

‘This,’ said Wolsey, brandishing a paper in the air, ‘from Sir John Wetherington, a knight of the finest repute: ‘Dacre does refuse to grant reparation to those whose lands and goods are destroyed by his henchmen, and not only will not bring such men to justice, but encourages them in their affairs, to the great detriment of the safety and wealth of the neighbourhood. Such is the lack of retribution that decent members of the community are now turning criminal themselves, for their own protection, or sustenance, so that the entire realm is like to become a den of thieves and murderers.’ There was much more in like vein from the self-important sheep farmer, who had loathed Dacre since he refused him the vice warden’s post.

Wolsey rattled on, like a skiff shooting the rapids, unable to stop even had he wished to. ‘Or this from none other than the Bishop of Carlisle: ‘My flock are too terrified by Scotch criminals to sleep at night, and must set guards on their walls and gates, to warn them of the raiders’ approach. In this the Baron Dacre amply aids the aforementioned Scots and outlaws by offering them safe passage through his lands, and freeing them from gaol whenever they have been apprehended, which is not often.’

Still Dacre did not react, other than to unclasp his cloak, and drape it over the back of his chair. Beneath he wore black britches and a black woollen jerkin, the dress of a man whose mood is dark.

Wolsey continued. ‘Or this, perhaps the worst we have yet heard, from Lord Foulberry, who claims that ‘the Warden General holds a private court of law in the west march, at Ascarton, which makes an abject mockery of true justice. The victims, already suffering great loss and pain, endanger their lives by facing in court criminals who, if imprisoned, will be freed from gaol within days of committal, and can then take their revenge on their accusers. Few of the robbers or killers found guilty ever see gaol, most being let loose with only a fine – fines, I might add, which they pay by selling the stolen goods that landed them in court in the first instance.’

Wolsey laid down his papers, and, after conferring with the Lord High Treasurer, faced the baron. ‘Not very edifying, I’m sure you will agree. These, and the many other depositions I have still to produce, paint a contemptible portrait of a man holding the king’s law, and the king’s reputation, in contempt. A man who all the while has, for personal benefit, incited the very mayhem and misrule he has been appointed – and well paid – to quash and dispel.’

Dacre raised his hand, to be allowed to speak, but the cardinal’s back was now turned to address the tribunal, which had raised its face to his, as to a beneficent sun. They spent half an hour basking in its warmth, but eventually, amid much nodding and murmuring, Wolsey turned back to the chamber. He held his fingertips under his chin, as if thinking hard, but those who knew him could have seen from his bright eyes and glowing cheeks that he was enjoying himself, the Star Chamber his playground, and the tribunal, the accused, his marvellous playthings.

‘It has been a long opening session, gentlemen, jury, and clerks of the court,’ he said, speaking to the rest of the chamber as if it were packed, although beyond Dacre and Blackbird there were only a couple of junior clerks and the doorman, shifting from boot to boot to relieve his aching feet. The cardinal smiled. ‘We will now adjourn for a break, and will recommence, to take the baron’s defence of the charges so far levelled, at the hour of three.’

Wolsey’s idea of time was not that of the clock tower, which had struck five before the tribunal reappeared. In the meantime, Dacre had been removed to a private cell on the ground floor, and given a plate of stew. Blackbird found a tavern offering hot pies, and returned at the appointed hour with gravy on his chin.

While waiting for the tribunal to return, Dacre asked for paper and pen. He sat scratching notes, seeming in no way discomfited by the delay.

When Wolsey and his men reappeared, the cardinal’s strategy was plain. The lords at his heels walked gingerly, as if toeing a line. Some had their arms outstretched, to aid their balance. Ale was placed before them, but was soon augmented with wine, which swiftly followed what they had already supped. The cardinal, however, drank water. As the evening wore on, it became clear that his companions no longer required the long deliberations that had held up that morning’s proceedings. When he turned to elaborate a point, or ask guidance, he was shooed back to business with a grandly waved hand, or a grave nod, whose seriousness was at times undermined by the hiccup that preceded it.

Blackbird settled back against the wall to watch. The trial, it seemed, would now be conducted between Wolsey and Dacre alone.

If it were a game, then the second round went to Dacre. Standing to deliver his defence, he put a hand on the back of his chair. His eyes roamed the room as he composed his thoughts, but when he began to speak he stared at a point above the tribunal’s heads, as if he were addressing someone far above their station.

‘Your eminence, my lords, let me begin with the accusation that lies beneath all the small individual complaints levelled against me by a gang – and I use the word deliberately – of collaborators, determined to bring me to my knees. Some have got it into their heads, it seems, that I am hand in glove with the criminals who roam my shires; that no only do I neglect to mete out justice to them as they deserve, but that I actively encourage them to persevere in it, presumably for my own financial gain.’

He gave a cough of laughter, but there was no humour in it. ‘Allow me to remind the members of this exalted company that only last month I tried and hanged eight of the cruellest and most unforgiving Scots killers and thieves the borderlands have ever known. They were captured on a raid in Teviotdale, given a decent trial, and sent to the gallows. Half of Carlisle turned out to watch them swing, and the crowd roared and clapped them on their way to perdition.’

He passed a cloth over his forehead before continuing. ‘Those lads were Armstrongs, to a man, yet that is the family I am supposed to hold dear, or so rumour has it. A clan I reputedly send out to do my bidding as if they were my own men. That particular charge has not been laid at my door, not in so many words, but it’s in the very air we breathe in this fancy chamber. And I am here to tell you, it’s a very strange notion, gentlemen, very strange indeed. One wonders quite where it was born. No out of truth, that is for sure. Though as this trial seems set to demonstrate, ye can never rely on truth prevailing, no even in a court of law.’

There was a flutter from Wolsey’s chair, and the cardinal got to his feet. ‘My lord, you can dispense with the philosophising. We are well capable of making our own deductions. Stick to the facts, and we will dress them as they require.’

The baron ignored this interruption and placed both hands on the back of his chair, which served as the prisoner’s dock. ‘And then there is Will Charlton. Even those who’ve never set foot beyond London town might well have heard of him, the most wily, ambitious, unscrupulous lout to be found outwith Carlisle’s dungeons.’

A few heads at the table nodded.

‘Well then, as ye likely know, he was bidding to turn the north into his own fiefdom, defying the king, defying me, and all his superiors and bringing ruin and death to those who tried to defend themselves. Did I let him roam free? Have I made a deal with him that has filled my coffers? What do you think?’ Scowling, he looked at the heavenly stars above the tribunal’s caps. ‘I did none of those things, my lords. Instead I sent out a posse to find him, imprisoned him, and in due course of time, after a trial so punctilious and proper that even Saint Peter could no have found fault with it, brought him too to justice. This time by the axe.’

A thrill ran through the panel, part revulsion, part pleasure. The cardinal’s head bobbed, as if in approbation, not that Dacre cared. ‘Consequently,’ he continued, ‘Charlton’s army of thugs is in disarray, the marches are breathing easier and, if I may be permitted no to philosophise but to speculate, there is no one of his stature who can take his place. Long before a successor can be found, the remains of the gang will have been picked off by my men.’ He showed his teeth in a smile. ‘That’s a task I assure you they are already pursuing with a vengeance. So, as ye see, one of the worst cankers in the region has been cut out, by my own hand. Is this the act of the traitor these accusers would have ye believe me to be? The Duke of Norfolk, no less, personally congratulated me on this victory.’ The baron paused, shifting the weight on his legs, and looked at his accusers. ‘Aye. If only he was here to counter the torrent of bile and bilge being thrown in my direction. But I doubt even his word would prevail against the snakes hissing in the pit at my feet. As they say, venom is stronger than verity.’

He rubbed his thigh, and looked towards the guard by the door. ‘Would there be a jug of water I could have? My throat is dry.’ The cardinal waved the doorman off to fetch water, and while the room waited, there was silence. The baron cast a glance at Blackbird, whose face had settled in a frown. The butler gave a curt nod, enough to remind his master that he was not alone.

When water had been brought, Dacre drained the tankard, and placed it by the jug on the floor. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

‘What next?’ He cast his eye down the list of charges, and shook his head. ‘We’ll be here for many an hour before I’ve dealt with all you have thrown at me.’ He looked up. ‘Well, I have nothing better to be doing. I trust your bench is padded.’

Wolsey tutted, and was about to rise from his seat once more when Dacre resumed.

‘We come now, your eminence, my lords, to the matter of my private court at Ascarton. Against the accusation that it is run laxly and outwith the bounds of law, I refer you simply to the record books. A detailed account of each trial is kept by my notary, Rayner, a man even Beelzebub himself with all his wiles would find it hard to tempt off the path of righteousness. There’s many a bishop could take lessons from him on rectitude, that’s for sure. The man is a sore trial to me on many counts, but never in regard to his duties.’